Power Round April 12, 2025

Answer Packet
Preliminaries
Time Limit: 80 minutes of work time. No extra time is given for ordering pages or placing them into the envelope!
Maximum Score: 111
ATTENTION: You will submit this entire packet (and only this packet)!
When instructed, check that this packet has all pages from 1-26.
Your final submission must be exactly the 26 pages of this packet in their original order placed into
the manila envelope.
Instructions: Problems that use the words “compute”, “list”, “identify”, or “draw” only call for an answer; no expla-
nation or proof is needed. Unless otherwise stated, all other questions require explanation or proof.
• Each team will receive exactly one packet with answer boxes (this packet!). This is the only packet that will
be graded. The boxes are all appropriately sized for the length of the question’s answer.
• Write all answers in the corresponding provided box (the box that comes directly after the question). Do NOT
write on the back of any pages of the answer packet. Any work written on the back of packet pages will not be
graded.
• If a single question has multiple parts, all answers must go into the same specified box. Questions with multiple
boxes will be clearly specified. You may not write answers to more than one question in a box or use a different
question’s box to continue your answer.
• Use blank scratch paper to work out problems. You may grab more scratch paper as needed. Afterward, it
is recommended to transfer your final answers into the boxes in dark pencil. Your team will not get another
packet with boxes if someone used a pen.
• If your team needs more room for a question, indicate this in the corresponding answer box and on the front
page. Then, use one of the provided extra pages attached to the back of the packet to continue your answer.
Label the answer with the question number. If you are writing multiple answers on an extra page, label each
and separate them clearly using one horizontal line between questions.
• You may only use one side of each extra page (the side with text). If an extra page has work on two sides,
neither side will be graded.
• Each team is limited to exactly two extra pages. Use them wisely!
• Each team will submit all 26 pages in the answer packet even if they are empty. They must be in the original
page order. Points will be deducted for every misordered page. Absolutely no other pages are allowed!
In your solution for a given problem, you may cite the statements of earlier problems (but not later ones) without
additional justification, even if you haven’t solved them. The problems are ordered by content, NOT DIFFICULTY.
It is to your advantage to attempt problems from throughout the test. While completing the round, you should not
consult the internet or any materials outside of the content of this test (including results not covered in this power
round). You may not use calculators.
Team ID

Used extra page 1?

Used extra page 2?

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Important: If a problem asks you to construct a tournament (or directed graph), you must neatly draw a directed
graph with the proper vertices (enclosed in circles!) and clearly drawn directed edges (this means arrows!). If you
use graphs in a proof, they must be in this format in order to be considered (using ellipses to denote an unknown
number of edges/vertices is permitted). Make sure your graphs are large, clean, and legible.
For example, the directed graph with vertices {A, B, C} and edges {(B → A), (C → A), (C → B)}:

1 Tournaments and Transitivity

Definition 1.1. A directed graph is an ordered pair G = (V, E) where V is a set of elements called vertices and E is
a set of ordered pairs of elements of V. Each element in E is called a directed edge. If p, q ∈ V are chosen such that
there exists a directed edge (p, q) ∈ E, we denote this directed edge as (p → q).
Problem 1.1 (1pt). Construct a directed graph with vertices {A, B, C, D} and edges {(D → A), (B → C), (C →
A), (C → D), (B → A)}.

It comes naturally to use directed graphs to model tournaments.

Definition 1.2. A tournament T = (V, E) is a directed graph such that the vertices of V are called players, and
there exists exactly one directed edge between every pair of players. In other words, if p and q are distinct players in
T , then either (p → q) or (q → p). If (p → q), we say that p beats/wins against q.
The graph in Problem 1.1 is almost a tournament!
Problem 1.2 (1pt). Redraw the graph in problem 1.1 and modify it to make it a tournament. (There are multiple
possible constructions.)

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Problem 1.3 (2pt). Compute the number of different tournaments with n players. Two tournaments are different
if they have different outcomes for at least one game.

Definition 1.3. We call a tournament transitive if whenever there are distinct players p, q, r where p beats q and q
beats r, then p beats r. A tournament with 1 or 2 players is always transitive.
Problem 1.4 (1pt). Construct a transitive tournament with 4 players.

Problem 1.5 (4pt). How many different tournaments with n players are transitive? Justify your answer.

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Problem 1.6 (2pt). Seagulls love transitivity and will flip the results of some games to make the overall tournament
transitive. Flipping a game takes an edge (p → q) and turns it into (q → p). However, they are also lazy, so they will
always flip the fewest number of games possible. The tournament depicted below just occurred and is untouched by
the seagulls. Compute the number of games the seagulls will flip in order to make it transitive. List the games they
flip. (There may be multiple correct answers.)

C B

D A

E F

Definition 1.4. A tournament is acyclic if for any player p, there is no sequence of edges starting from p that ends
at p.
It turns out that being transitive and being acyclic are actually the same exact thing!
Problem 1.7 (3pt). Prove that if a tournament with n ≥ 2 players is acyclic, then it is transitive.

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Problem 1.8 (3pt). Prove that if a tournament with n ≥ 2 players is transitive, then it is acyclic.

Problem 1.9 (7pt). Recall that the seagulls always flip the fewest number of edges necessary to make a tournament
transitive. Another tournament with 6 players takes place. To the devastation of the seagulls, it turns out to be the
worst-case scenario – there are no tournaments on 6 players that would require them to flip more games. How many
edges do the seagulls need to flip in this worst case? Prove that no tournament with 6 players will ever require them
to flip more than this number and that there exists a tournament where the seagulls must flip this many edges.

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Problem 1.9 continued

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Definition 1.5. Let T = (V, E) be a tournament, and suppose V ′ ⊂ V is nonempty. Let E ′ ⊂ E be a set of directed
edges such that if p, q ∈ V ′ and (p → q) ∈ E, then (p → q) ∈ E ′ . We say that the resulting tournament T ′ = (V ′ , E ′ )
is a subtournament of T.
In other words, a subtournament contains a subset V ′ of all of the players, and the result of all the games between
the players in V ′ are the same as they were in V. Subtournaments are often a good way to analyze tournaments when
we only know a limited amount of information.
Definition 1.6. A tournament has a cycle if there exists any player p such that there is a nonzero sequence of
distinct edges starting from p that ends at p. The length of the cycle is the number of distinct players it contains.
For example, Problem 1.6’s tournament has a cycle starting and ending at B, namely (B → C), (C → D), (D → B).
Problem 1.10 (5pt). Prove that if a tournament has a cycle of length k, where k ≥ 3, then the tournament has a
cycle of length i for all 3 ≤ i ≤ k.

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Unfortunately, transitive tournaments are hard to come by. Luckily, when we examine subtournaments, transitivity
is a lot more common!
Problem 1.11 (2pt). Prove that any tournament with 22 players contains a transitive subtournament with 3 players.

Problem 1.12 (6pt). Prove that for every positive integer n, any tournament with 2n players contains a transitive
subtournament with n + 1 players. (A proof that earns full credit for this problem automatically earns you full credit
for 1.11)

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Problem 1.12 continued

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2 Scores Sequences and Reducibility

Understanding the underlying structure of tournaments all begins with the scores. Given a tournament, what can
we say about the scores?
Definition 2.1. Let T = (V, E) be an n-tournament (a tournament with n players) where V = {p1 , . . . , pn }. The
score of each player pi is denoted si and is given by the number of outgoing edges from pi (the number of games pi
wins).
Definition 2.2. List the player scores of a tournament T in a nondecreasing order. The resulting list is called the
score sequence of T , which we denote as S. A score sequence S is called valid if there exists a tournament where the
scores of all the players, ordered in nondecreasing order, is exactly S.
Problem 2.1 (1pt). Compute the score sequence for the following tournament:

B
C

D
E

Problem 2.2 (2pt). Find all possible score sequences for a transitive tournament with n people. Justify your answer.

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Definition 2.3. We call a tournament reducible if there is a way to partition V into two nonempty sets W and L
such that the following two criteria are satisfied:
• Every player in V is in exactly one of W and L
• Every player in W beats every player in L.
If it is not possible to partition the players in such a way, then the tournament is irreducible.
For example, the tournament:

is reducible into two groups, W = {C} and L = {A, B} since C beats both A and B.
Problem 2.3 (1pt). Construct a tournament of 5 people that is reducible into a group of 3 and a group of 2. List
the two sets of players and label them with “winners” and “losers”.

Definition 2.4. A random n-tournament Ten is a tournament in which for every pair of players (p, q), the probability
that p beats q is 21 .

Problem 2.4 (1pt). Compute the probability that Te3 , a random 3-tournament, is reducible.

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Problem 2.5 (5pt). Prove that if the absolute value of the difference in scores between all pairs of players of an
n-tournament Tn is less than n2 , then Tn is irreducible.

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Cycles with length three are quite common in tournaments, and they’re even more so in irreducible tournaments.
One fun fact we won’t prove here is that every player in an irreducible tournament is contained within some cycle!
Problem 2.6 (2pt). Prove that every irreducible tournament with 4 players contains a cycle of length 3.

Problem 2.7 (3pt). Prove that every irreducible tournament with n ≥ 4 people contains a cycle of length 3. (A proof
that earns full credit for this problem automatically earns you full credit for 2.6.)

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Definition 2.5. Let T = (V, E) be a tournament. A directed path is a sequence of directed edges in E that joins a
sequence of distinct vertices in V .
For example, the sequence (E → D), (D → B), (B → A) is a path in the tournament in Problem 2.1 that joins
together the vertices E, D, B, and A.
Definition 2.6. We say an n-tournament T = (V, E) has a Hamiltonian path if we can find some ordering of the
players into the list (p1 , . . . , pn ) such that the distinct edges (p1 → p2 ), (p2 → p3 ), . . . , (pn−1 → pn ) are in the set E.
In other words, a Hamiltonian path is a directed path that visits every player exactly once.
Problem 2.8 (2pt). Prove that every transitive tournament has a Hamiltonian path.

The tournament doesn’t even have to be transitive! In fact, we will prove that there is a Hamiltonian path in every
tournament.
Problem 2.9 (4pt, 1pt).
(a) Start out with some nonempty directed path that joins vertices p1 , . . . , pi . Given a player x that is not already
in the path, prove that you can always create a path that joins together vertices p1 , . . . , pi and x, in some order.
(b) Prove that every tournament has a Hamiltonian path.

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Problem 2.10 (2pt). Are the following score sequences valid? If so, you do not need to provide any justification. If
not, provide a brief explanation without explicitly referencing 2.13 or 2.14.
1. (1,1,2,2)
2. (1,1,3,3,3,4)
3. (3,3,3,3,3,3,3)
4. (1,1,1,2,4,6,6)

One way to view the validity of score sequences is to remove the player that won the most games and check if
the resulting score sequence is valid. Consider a non-decreasing sequence of n integers (s1 , . . . , sn ) where m =
sn . We can conclude that (s1 , . . . , sn ) is the score sequence of an n-tournament if and only if the new sequence
(s1 , s2 , ..., sm , sm+1 − 1, ..., sn−1 − 1), when arranged in non-decreasing order, is a valid score sequence of some
(n − 1)-tournament. Using this idea, we examine a mathematical expression to check this same criteria.
For the following two questions, consider the following nondecreasing ordered set of integers S = (s1 , . . . , sn ).
Problem 2.11 (2pt). If S is a valid score sequence, then
k  
X k k(k − 1)
si ≥ =
i=1
2 2

for all 1 ≤ k ≤ n, with equality at k = n.

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Problem 2.12 (12pt). If S satisfies

k  
X k k(k − 1)
si ≥ =
i=1
2 2
for all 1 ≤ k ≤ n, with equality at k = n, then S is a valid score sequence.

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Problem 2.12 continued

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3 Who Wins?
Tournaments give rise to some interesting players. Let’s take a deep dive into some of these special players.
Definition 3.1. We say a player k of a tournament T is a king of T if either k wins against all other players of the
tournament, or for all players m such that k loses to m, there exists a third player p such that k wins against p and
p wins against m.
Definition 3.2. We say a king a of a tournament T is Alexandrian if a beats all other players of T.
In other words, a king is a player who wins against everyone in either one or two steps, and an Alexandrian king is
a special kind of king that beats everyone in exactly one step.
Problem 3.1 (1pt). Draw a 3-tournament with exactly 1 king and another with exactly 3 kings.

Problem 3.2 (2pt). Show that no 4-tournament can have exactly 2 kings. (Do not apply Problem 3.7.)

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It is difficult to describe exactly who “wins” a tournament. One approach is to consider the player with the most wins
against other players. To explore this idea, take a tournament T = (V, E), and say p is a player of T . Let W p ⊆ V
be the set of all players that p beats, and let Lp ⊆ V be the set of all players that beat p. Let EW and EL be the
sets of edges that correspond to all games played by players in W p and Lp respectively. (Refer to Definition 1.5 for
a formal definition of these sets of edges.) We denote subtournaments Wp = (W p , EW ) and Lp = (Lp , EL ).
Problem 3.3 (2pt, 3pt). (King Seagull Theorem)
(a) Suppose a player k has the most wins in the tournament or is tied for the most wins, and for the sake of
contradiction suppose that k is not a king—i.e. that there exists some player p such that k does not win against
p in one or two steps. Argue that p must beat everyone in subtournament Wk .
(b) Show that |W p | > |W k |, and use this to prove that every tournament must have at least 1 king.

As we have shown, every tournament has at least 1 king, which is desirable should we try to define the “winner” of
a tournament. We can also characterize another relationship between players and kings!
Problem 3.4 (1pt, 2pt).
(a) Let T = (V, E) be a tournament, and suppose p ∈ V is a player that has lost to at least one other player.
Explain why the nonempty subtournament Lp contains a king.
(b) Argue that any king of Lp is also a king of T.

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As a corollary, it follows that everyone who has lost at least once must have also lost to a king. Note that this does
not imply that everyone who wins is a king!
Problem 3.5 (1pt). Construct a 4-tournament such that there is a player p in the tournament has at least one win
but is not a king.

Unfortunately, Problem 3.4 implies that the “winner” of a tournament in our naive sense is generally not unique.
Problem 3.6 (3pt). Show that a king is unique if and only if they are an Alexandrian king.
(Note: For a proof of an “if and only if” statement, you need to show the implication in both directions for full
credit. In this question, you need to show that any unique king is an Alexandrian king, and any Alexandrian king
must be a unique king.)

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Of course, Alexandrian kings are quite rare (as we will soon prove), so again, we generally expect to see more than
a single king. Even so, it seems like seagulls really hate having two kings.
Problem 3.7 (3pt). Prove that no tournament can have exactly 2 kings.

Trying to count exactly how many kings a tournament has is quite difficult, but we can try to estimate how many
kings a tournament may have.
Problem 3.8 (2pt). Show that the probability that a random n-tournament contains an Alexandrian king approaches
0 as n → ∞. (You may use the fact that if p(n) is a polynomial function in n and q(n) is an exponential function in
n with base greater than 1, then limn→∞ p(n)
q(n) = 0.)

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As our intuition suggests, Alexandrian kings are (very) rare, and they only get increasingly rare as the size of the
tournament grows larger. What about kings?
Definition 3.3. Let p and q be players in a tournament T . We say that an ordered pair of players (p, q) is non-
dominating if p loses against q and for all players r ∈ Lq , p loses against r.
Problem 3.9 (1pt). Let S = ({p1 , p2 , p3 }, {(p1 → p2 ), (p1 → p3 ), (p2 → p3 )}) be a 3-tournament. Identify all
non-dominating pairs in S.

Problem 3.10 (1pt). Do Problem 3.9 with a cyclic tournament S ′ = ({q1 , q2 , q3 }, {(q1 → q2 ), (q2 → q3 ), (q3 → q1 )}).

As 3.9 and 3.10 show, Definition 3.3 is just an unwieldy way of encapsulating the fact that if such a non-dominating
pair (p, q) exists, then p is not a king of T.
Problem 3.11 (3pt). Suppose that (p, q) is an ordered pair of players in a random n-tournament Ten . Find the
probability that (p, q) is non-dominating.

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Problem 3.12 (3pt). Use Problem 3.11 to generate a lower bound on the probability that every player of Ten is a
king. Your bound should approach 1 as n → ∞. (You do not need to prove that your bound approaches 1.)

In the limit, we might expect all players of the tournament to have approximately the same number of wins, which
tells us that we should have a very large number of kings. Combined with our naive perception of “winners”, this has
the unfortunate implication that for large tournament sizes, almost every player is a “winner”.
To top off this section, we take a look at another way to classify tournaments. This time, instead of trying to shrink
tournaments, we look at an even bigger one!
Definition 3.4. We call a tournament T = (V, E) super-kingable if there exists a tournament X = (U, F ) where T
is a subtournament of X and the set of kings of X is exactly V .
Problem 3.13 (2pts). Prove that if a non-trivial tournament T is super-kingable, then the tournament T itself does
not contain an Alexandrian king. (A tournament with a single player is considered trivial.)

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Problem 3.14 (6pts). Prove that if a non-trivial tournament T contains no Alexandrian king, then T is super-
kingable.

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